The place for great and not-so-great nearly forgotten videos from the decade of Miami Vice, mullets, and acid wash jeans. All praise to the bands, YouTube, and the original posters of these videos.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Animotion - Obsession

We continue our series of songs that you didn't know were covers with Animotion's 1985 hit, "Obsession." This song was originally written by Michael Des Barres and Holly Knight (more on them in a moment).

Animotion was a San Francisco-based band that was mainly comprised of former members of the Sci-Fi rock band Red Zone. The six member band was also notable for having co-lead singers -- Astrid Plane and Bill Wadhams. Their 1985 self-titled debut LP reached #28 on the charts, led by "Obsession," which would go on to become a #6 hit for them. Unfortunately, lineup changes and weaker material would hurt the band, though they did release three major label albums before their 1989 break up.

The video for "Obsession" is a nice set up for our forthcoming All Hallows Even celebration; it looks like a cool mid-1980's costume party in California. MTV loved the vid and it went into heavy rotation for quite some time in 1985, which no doubt helped the song.

As previously mentioned, the original version was written and performed by Michael Des Barres and Holly Knight and was featured in the 1983 movie A Night in Heaven. By the by, Holly Knight has been previously mentioned on ERV (we now have a tag for her) as a big time songwriter. There is more on her on the posts for John Waite's "Change" and Lou Gramm's "Just Between You and Me" ... and yes, she wrote both of those songs too.

Cool trivia fact: Animotion is not a one hit wonder, as 1985's "Let Him Go" (#39) and 1989's "Room to Move" (#9) both broke the top 40.